Asunción: Multi-party senators walked out of the extraordinary session, leaving it without a quorum to avoid consideration of the controversial bill to repeal the UI funding agreement.
Senator Enrique Riera (ANR, HC), a leading supporter of the bill in the Senate, along with the Honor Colorado faction and its opposition allies, called on the Senate to pass the bill, which had already been approved by the House of Representatives .
In a close vote, 20 senators voted to allow the matter to go to the Senate. Only two senators abstained, including Senate leader Óscar Salomón (ANR, pro-government) and Senator Amado Florentín (PLRA), while 23 senators stayed away from the session for not considering the bill.
Thus, the second extraordinary session, organized by the President of the Senate himself, was set for Tuesday 20 December, one day before the start of the parliamentary break, which will last from 21 to 2 March. A public hearing on the same matter will precede that meeting.
This date was deliberately chosen because then the internal elections will be over and the current incitement to the electoral campaign will lose its force. Honor Colorado, of which Horacio Cartes is the leader, himself approved the 2030 Agenda as President of the Republic in 2017 and is now trying to win votes in the run-up to internal elections by fighting that agenda.
It is not excluded that on the same day the Abdo Group and its allies will also leave the extraordinary session without a quorum so that the issue cannot be dealt with before the legislative work resumes.
In the Chamber of Deputies, the bill “Repeal of Law 6699/20 approving the Financing Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Paraguay on the support program for the transformation of the education system in Paraguay was approved with 63 votes and its attachments”.
If financial support from the European Union were to end, by 2023 75,000 students would be left without school supplies and 47,000 high school students without vouchers for school supplies. According to the director of administration and finance of the MEC, Óscar Stark, lunch for 45,000 students would also be lost for four months.
Post-election debate desired
The president of the Senate specified that there is an interest in knowing the extent of the financing agreement with the European Union (EU) and that he will do so if a new extraordinary session is requested by 20 January.
To this end, it is intended to disclose the scope of the agreement in a public hearing. “A lot of people (senators) want to discuss it, but they want it to happen after the election,” she said.
The public hearing, scheduled for 8:00 on 20 May, will be attended by representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and the Minister of Education.
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